The past couple days Noah has been once again obsessed with buttons. MY buttons. The OH MY GOD STOP IT GO TO YOUR ROOM buttons. He pushes them, pounds on them, shoves bits of grilled cheese sandwiches underneath them so they're all sticky and permanently pressed in and OH MY GOD STOP IT GO TO YOUR ROO ROO ROO ROOM BEEP BOOP SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIALIZED. I've already made him cry three times today, what with my terrible refusal to serve him a grilled cheese sandwich for the 500th meal in a row and insisting that he eat some cheese RAVIOLI instead, like the HORROR of a slightly different cheese-wrapped-in-carbohydrate food product, and then I wouldn't let him pelt the baby with blueberries and when I told him to sit down properly on his chair he stood up on the chair with THAT LOOK, that knowing, defiant look, like yeah, I'm standing on the chair, woman. What are you gonna do about it? I'm gonna...uh...I'm gonna say GO TO YOUR ROOM, is what I'm gonna do, and...and...not let you eat the ravioli that you totally were never going to eat anyway. *shoves fingers in mouth and goes all bug-eyed from...
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This morning started off with me randomly composing a song for Ezra about how much I like coffee, sung to the tune of "Baby Got Back." Five minutes later, I realized I'd forgotten to put the inner basket in the coffee maker and there was a veritable flood of delicious, life-forcian coffee seeping all over the countertop and under appliances and soaking the fancy baby food cookbook that I'd just used to whip up some homemade barley cereal that was promptly rejected with EXTREME PREJUDICE and those stupid brown hippie paper towels fucking SUCK but those pre-fold diapers really are pretty handy so I guess I can still keep my newfound crunchability cred except for the part where I cursed out the coffee maker in the presence of my three-year-old, but needless to say the day did not necessarily get much better after that, except maybe for when I finally got to shower at 4:30 pm, just in time for Jason to get home so I can open some wine because I STILL HAVE STANDARDS, PEOPLE.
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I keep getting the theme song from Jaws stuck in my head, usually right when Ezra starts rooting around and opens his mouth and oh my God, he's heading straight for the boob DAA NA DAA NA DAANADAANADAANA. He's like a shark, these days. A toothless geriatric shark, intent on furiously gumming you to death, shaking his head back and forth and all around while he uses his shark flippers to grab flipperfuls of flesh to twist and dig into with his little shark fingernails because he's inordinately cranky and okay, it's not a perfect metaphor, but still. OW. Noah's first tooth sprouted about two weeks after we gave up on nursing, so I have to admit that I am sore afraid here. (Chapped afraid! Raw afraid! Chafed afraid!) This is already HELLS ROUGH here, as the kid shrieks and squawks and chomps and protests and rejects every teething ring in the world because, apparently, they are not made of human flesh. He already recognizes the bottle of Hyland's Teething Tablets and gets overly excited at the sight of it -- OH PRAISE JEBUS FOR WHITE POWDERED RELIEF -- and aaaaaaeeeeeeeiiiiii the drooling and the fussing and the gnawing on...
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So, because all these goddamn unicorns keep shitting on the floor and eating the drapes, Danielle, Chad, Cara, Baileyswedishfish, Dona, SueBee AND Jessi all win. I figured I didn't actually need to say anything, since everybody just stares at the baby photos anyway, and the captions could announce my intention to run for governor of the Outer Spacian Hinterlands of Pluto and the comments would still mostly be about nomming on Ezra's cheeks. And of course, I do not blame you. He is incredibly nommable, and I haven't had anything original to say since 1992. Honorable mentions go to Kim and die Frau for trying to find something noble in my intentions (i.e., focusing on my beautiful babies' smiles instead of being all neurotic and hand-wringy). You both win leprechauns. (Speaking of hand-wringy, how awesome is it that right after I'm all, "my kid's expensive private preschool kicked him out of SOCCER!!!11!", I read this post at Sweet Juniper about the Detroit Public Schools failing children in a very profound and fundamental way, on a massive scale, and it makes me twitchy and angry and heartsick and grateful, and if you haven't read it [and the postscript] you should. It...
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So a few weeks ago, I told Jason that I wanted to switch to cloth diapers. He was all for it, of course -- I mean, we have an ENTIRE DRAWER of Gerber pre-folds that we use for burp rags! We'll just go to the store and like, buy some pins. (He's so cute, really. He is. Precious.) Of course, I quickly schooled him on the Modern Cloth Diaper System, with its space-age absorbency and inserts and snaps and the fact that Noah and Ezra can actually wear the SAME SIZE, like oh my God, we can finally stop spending all our booze money on Lightening McQueen Pull-Ups (the prices of which are totally the diaper manufacturers getting all passive-aggressive on you: Oh, you want to potty-train your kid? You just need something for naps and nighttime? Oh, let us HELP YOU with that! And reward your years of faithful diaper purchasing with a totally extraneous product that inexplicably costs twice as much. Fork it over, suckers, we ain't done with you yet.). I pointed out the number of times already that we have Totally Forgotten To Buy Diapers and driven to the store in a panic begging the baby...
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NOT PLEASED. NOT PREPARED. (BUT NEVERTHELESS IMPRESSED WITH SUPER-STRETCHY PRESCHOOLER-SIZED MITTENS.) VERY PLEASED & SLIGHTLY MORE PREPARED, AS LONG AS WE PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE RUBBER RAIN BOOTS ON HIS FEET. WELL, OKAY. LET'S PAY A LITTLE ATTENTION TO THEM. GIRAFFES, PEOPLE! WHO NEEDS WARMTH WHEN YOU HAVE GIRAFFES? TAKEN RIGHT BEFORE I THREW A SNOWBALL AT HIM, WHICH MADE HIM SLIGHTLY LESS PLEASED, BUT WHATEVER, I'M TOTALLY A GOOD MOM BECAUSE AT LEAST I GAVE HIM HIS MITTENS BACK AFTER I CLEANED OFF MY CAR WITH THEM. AND NOW MY HANDS ARE TOO COLD TO TURN OFF CAPS LOCK, SORRY. ONE OF THESE WINTERS I'LL REMEMBER TO BUY GLOVES BEFORE MARCH BECAUSE WHO BUYS NEW GLOVES IN MARCH? I'LL JUST LOSE THEM BY NEXT WINTER AND IT PROBABLY WON'T SNOW AGAIN UNTIL NEXT MARCH ANYWAY AND WHO BUYS NEW GLOVES IN MARCH? RIGHT? WHAT?
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